By: Miro Petek
It had long been hanging in the air. Expectations were high, especially for those of us who had read Bronja Žakelj’s Belo se pere na devetdeset (White is Washed at Ninety). The publisher Beletrina broke sales records with this book, and the film adaptation of this remarkable novel was a quiet simmering anticipation: would the film capture the full breadth of the novel, its intimate and sensitive confession, and what would the encounter of these two worlds – novel and film – ultimately look like? Would the book and the film overlap gracefully, becoming two dimensions that do not compete but continue to live on as an excellent novel and an excellent film? What will be the judgment and opinion of those who have read the book and also seen the film? When the book was first released, I began reading it on a digital platform, but after a few pages I stopped and bought a printed copy, because such a book deserves a place on the home bookshelf. And of course, one must also see the film, which speaks in a different language than the book.
At the moment, cinemas – under a screenplay signed by Marko Naberšnik, Bronja Žakelj, and Aleš Pavlin, with Marko Naberšnik as director – are sold out. After its success at the international festival in Sarajevo and the opening, sold‑out screenings at LIFFe, tickets have become nearly unattainable. Packed Cineplexes across Slovenia mean 3,000 viewers per day. By contrast, Slovenia has had films financed with state money that failed to attract even a thousand viewers to cinemas. Piran – Pirano by Goran Vojnović was seen on the big screen by about 11,000 people. We have directors and production houses circling around Metelkova who are artistically mediocre and creatively impotent yet rewarded from the state budget because of their loyalty to a certain political clique.
The interest in White is Washed at Ninety shows that we finally have a film Slovenians actually want to see. And of course, director Marko Naberšnik’s signature guarantees that audiences will not leave disappointed. Just recall his Petelinji zajtrk.
The film narrative of White is Washed at Ninety began seven years ago, at a time when Slovenian culture was already trapped in the grip of the “left” with a lowercase “l,” and the Left with a capital “L” further shackled Slovenian culture in the paradigm of invisible culture and invisible work. With Asta Vrečko, they effectively opened the door to non‑culture within culture. The minister was absent from the opening of LIFFe and from the film’s premiere, because such creativity does not fit into her mental and political framework. Films that fail to draw even a thousand viewers to cinemas and are declared “art films” at Metelkova, because they are supposedly deeper and more intellectual, something the uncultured Slovenian public cannot understand, are the soul of this distorted cultural policy.
Much has been said and written about the film’s content: the story is moving, witty, and at the same time inspiring. All of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s follow the film’s story with a good measure of nostalgia. It takes us back to the times when we went to Italy for jeans and reminds us of the tricks we played to outwit the absurdities of the system back then. Reviews of the film are mostly kind, though there are a few confused voices claiming it is right‑wing propaganda. Bronja’s father does indeed rejoice at the collapse of Yugoslavia and the establishment of independent Slovenia, saying that now we will no longer be giving money to those idlers in the south of the country. On the television screen of those times, the news is read by Slavko Bobovnik and Janko Šopar. And when Nana Milčinski sings Dan ljubezni in a new arrangement, it is hard to remain unmoved.
White is Washed at Ninety is not some hermetic experiment; it is a highly professional and watchable film. And what must be underlined here: watchability is not the enemy of art. The greatest enemies of culture and art today sit on Maistrova Street 10.